Apparently my module concern was unfounded. Sorry for the lack of understanding.
I looked back and found the last daily mainline build that includes i386 and installed it... 2.6.39-999-generic #2001104191714
On first boot, the behavior IS different under this kernel. For one thing, it attempted to connect immediately (unsuccessfully, but at least it attempted). I will try some things over a few reboots, including sleeping this netbook during the next few attempts and documenting what I see. If you can point out some things I should look for specifically (do you look at kern.log or syslog or both or neither)
Apparently my module concern was unfounded. Sorry for the lack of understanding.
I looked back and found the last daily mainline build that includes i386 and installed it... 2.6.39-999-generic #2001104191714
On first boot, the behavior IS different under this kernel. For one thing, it attempted to connect immediately (unsuccessfully, but at least it attempted). I will try some things over a few reboots, including sleeping this netbook during the next few attempts and documenting what I see. If you can point out some things I should look for specifically (do you look at kern.log or syslog or both or neither)